An innovative high-level human-robot interaction for disabled persons

Human-robot interaction poses great challenges to disabled people who must be able to control the robot via a limited physical ability. A novel semi-autonomous human-robot system where the robot requires only high-level commands from the human to perform its tasks is proposed. In this system a Morse code inspired but relatively more flexible and robust communication technique generates such high-level commands from electromyogram (EMG) signals. The proposed framework has been implemented to develop a prototypical human-robot interaction system. Initial results from preliminary human subject experiments are encouraging and demonstrative of the advantages of such a human-robot framework.